Sunday, October 2, 2011

Then and Now

Back when the US was a heathy country under a good leader with a real vision for the future, here's what he had to say about high unemployment:

To those who say that our expenditures for Public Works and other means for recovery are a waste that we cannot afford, I answer that no country, however rich, can afford the waste of its human resources. Demoralization caused by vast unemployment is our greatest extravagance. Morally, it is the greatest menace to our social order. Some people try to tell me that we must make up our minds that for the future we shall permanently have millions of unemployed just as other countries have had them for over a decade. What may be necessary for those countries is not my responsibility to determine. But as for this country, I stand or fall by my refusal to accept as a necessary condition of our future a permanent army of unemployed. On the contrary, we must make it a national principle that we will not tolerate a large army of unemployed and that we will arrange our national economy to end our present unemployment as soon as we can and then to take wise measures against its return. I do not want to think that it is the destiny of any American to remain permanently on relief rolls.

That is a from a fireside chat by FDR on September 30, 1934. Compare that to the right wing Republicans who are happy to wreck the economy, leave unemployment high, allow home foreclosures to continue while they give ever more tax cuts to the ultra-rich. Or compare that to the timid and feeble actions of Obama and the Democrats.

How the mighty have fallen. Given the state of incompetence among the political class in America and given the supine acceptance of the lousy situation by the American public, I see no future recovery for the US. I see a lost decade or two for America just like the Japanese have suffered since 1991.